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The postmaster finds Ingrid only two days after he’s been hired, which is only about a week after they’ve all reunited at Garrag Mach. She stares longer than she should at the parchment being thrust her way, wondering how Ignatz and Raphael managed to construct a fully outfitted postal service so quickly, with so few resources, and feels a sudden wave of shame overtake her at not being able to get the pegasus scouts running with the same efficiency.
The letter is from her father, and his worry bleeds through every word of it. She knows he’s getting old, knows that her brothers struggle to manage their lands and their people. Which is the worse place to be, she wonders - in the bruised and battered remnants of the Kingdom, beaten down from war? Or in the ruins of an old monastery, watching their king pace like a caged animal?
At the end of the letter, her father makes a desperate plea to her to find a suitable match amongst the nobles he’s heard are congregating at Garrag Mach. She crumples the letter in her fist, her hands shaking as she stares out at the courtyard and the entrance hall.
.
Years ago, back when she’d had the time to consider what she liked and didn’t like about Garrag Mach, she’d picked the bridge connecting the monastery to the main grounds as her favorite place and spent hours just sitting there, tucked away along one of the more hidden columns on the wide walkways. Or she’d fly over it on Kyphon, one of the last great pegasi that the Galatea stables had had the funds to raise, ducking in and out of the stone columns that bolted the bridge to the foothills far below.
She’d liked to fly alone, but one time she hadn’t been quick enough to escape from the stables unnoticed, and Dorothea had asked for a ride. A harmless request from a classmate, especially since Dorothea’s own pegasus - the handsome, extravagantly purchased courting present that Dorothea had lovingly named Velox - had been out of commission, wing broken after fighting with a horse in the stables.
It had been the right thing to do, to say yes to Dorothea; to say yes despite the yawning, fearful chasm in Ingrid’s heart that screamed no, that had been screaming no ever since Dorothea had risked life and limb to bring Ingrid back from that stupid suitor and had capped it all off with a wink and a teasing sentence that had set Ingrid’s heart on fire and had upended her whole life. There was no coming back from that moment, no way to lock back up the uncertainty that her bones seemed to be made out of lately, no way to forget that sudden moment of breathlessness.
And then - and then they’d been in the air, uncomfortably silent, Dorothea’s grasp loose around Ingrid’s waist, as if she’d sensed that if her hands were to press any more firmly Ingrid might have burned up from the inside out. It had felt more terrifying than flying had ever been; Kyphon swept low and her stomach swept lower, nerves making her hands clammy in a way they hadn’t been since she’d first gripped the reins of a pegasus, wide-eyed and small, the thick straps slipping out of her grip.
Kyphon had pitched under her indecision, listing left, and Dorothea had drawn a sharp breath in from behind her. For all her giggling and frivolity, Dorothea had always been a good flier, almost as good as Ingrid. She’d known. Perhaps she’d always known, from the moment Ingrid had met her on the first day and fallen quiet, gaze lingering for a second too long, but on that day Ingrid had felt like there had been a brand straight from Dorothea’s hands to her carefully hidden heart.
“Focus,” Dorothea had breathed out against the shell of Ingrid’s ear, and like the tides swelling to meet the moon, she’d listened.
.
Dorothea’s old room is dusty with disuse, five years later, and Ingrid presses her gloved hand against her mouth to stop herself from sneezing as she stands there, taking everything in. From beside her, Ashe twirls the lockpick he’d used to break in and says, “What will you tell her when she comes back?”
Ingrid turns, caught off guard, frowning. “What?”
“When she comes back,” Ashe says patiently, raising an eyebrow. “What reason are you going to give Dorothea for breaking and entering into her room when she gets back to Garrag Mach?”
Ingrid turns away, scanning her eyes across the dried flower petals on the windowsill, the moth-bitten old coats left behind, and scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why on earth would she come back?”
Ashe makes a disapproving noise. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because she’s from the Empire?” Ingrid tries to say, but it comes out more like a question as she reaches out and runs her fingers over magical tomes, stacked neatly on Dorothea’s desk. Her touch lingers over a primer on thunder, the edges laced with gilt and plum-colored thread. The book had come wrapped in fragile, silvery paper, Ingrid remembers; the day that Dorothea had unwrapped it Ingrid had been in the back of the class, half-asleep, watching through drooping eyes as the sunlight streamed in and streaked Dorothea’s hair chestnut.
She snatches her fingers away. “She’s from the Empire.”
When she turns around again to face Ashe, he looks unconvinced. His brow furrows.
“She - “ Ingrid feels like she needs to explain. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth. “She would have already been here, if she could have.”
“Is that true? Or is that what you want to be true?” Ashe asks slowly.
What she wants? What Ingrid has wanted has never -
There’s a sudden commotion from outside, cries of shock echoing and a familiar thup-thup-thup of arrows hitting stone. This is the second ambush in as many days that the Empire soldiers have launched, determined to keep Garrag Mach as empty and haunted as it’s always been.
Ingrid is almost grateful for the distraction as she grabs her spear from where she’s leaned it against Dorothea’s old bed. She’s never had to face what she’s wanted before, and she certainly refuses to do it now, when her heart is already fraying and blood-soaked at the edges.
.
Dorothea had joined their class only two months after Byleth took over the Blue Lions, and Ingrid had spent a week avoiding her in every possible way in the tiny classroom. There had been something so bright about Dorothea that had hurt to look at, and Ingrid had never dealt well with unknowns.
Still doesn’t deal well with unknowns.
She’d managed to keep to herself for two weeks before she’d been forced to confront it, in the training hall of all places. She’d been stretching when Byleth had approached her with a stack of papers in her hand, Dorothea tagging along behind, both dressed in training leathers.
“Hi,” Byleth had said, her large eyes unblinking as she’d regarded Ingrid. Ingrid had straightened up, her arms falling awkwardly to her sides, and felt a strange uncertainty begin to form in the pit of her stomach.
“Hello, Professor,” she’d said back. Her gaze had flickered to Dorothea, and she’d said, stilted, “And - Dorothea.”
Dorothea had beamed at Ingrid and given her a little wave, even though there had been nothing friendly enough that Ingrid had done in the past two weeks to warrant that. Ingrid had looked away quickly, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“Er - are you two here to train?” she’d asked, immediately feeling foolish. It had, after all, been the training hall, and they’d both been in training leathers.
“Ingrid,” Byleth had said in lieu of a response, “please tutor Dorothea in swordsmanship so she can catch up to our class.”
Ingrid had blanched. “Professor, you know my specialty is lances - I’m not very good with swords.”
Byleth had squinted down at her papers. “Well, you’re not bad at it. You’re not bad at anything, Ingrid.” From anyone else, it might have sounded like a saccharine compliment, but Byleth had delivered it so flatly, still looking at some diagram she’d scribbled down, that it had just sounded like another item on her list, as ordinary and commonplace as the weather for the day. Ingrid had frowned and looked away, squaring her shoulders before she’d looked back at Dorothea. She’d been - blindsided to see the tiny smile still firmly on Dorothea’s face, her eyes bright and amused.
It had looked soft, like Dorothea had been in on some private joke that no one else in the world knew, her eyes twinkling. Ingrid had remembered the jolt of lightning that had sent through her body, a frisson of nervous energy that she’d disguised with a twirl of her lance as she turned away to set it down against the wall.
“Alright,” she’d said, and she’d meant for it to come out evenly, but her voice had been lower instead, like a cord stretched taut. There had been a second of hesitation when Dorothea had looked back at her, a moment that had stretched on forever -
“Alright,” Dorothea had echoed, gaze bright, and that had been what Ingrid remembered of that day, the way that Dorothea had drawn something out of Ingrid that she couldn’t control, something wild and unhidden and true.
.
Everyone comes back changed from the five years they all spent tearing the ground of Fodlan apart, and not all the changes are made equal; there’s something somber and striking about Petra’s new tattoos, and something absurd and endearing about Annette’s new axe skills.
“I picked it up on the road to defend myself and Mercie with,” Annette says defensively, hefting the comically oversized blade over her shoulder. “It was a precaution!”
“I don’t - “ Ingrid says helplessly. Next to her, Sylvain has collapsed onto his knees, shaking with laughter. Even Felix has his lips pressed in a tight line, his face red with the struggle to not laugh at tiny, tiny Annette lugging around an axe bigger than her head.
Ingrid clears her throat and tries again. “It’s a - very useful skill,” she tries to say, except she gets stuck on the image in front of her again - Annette, still wearing her tiny kitten heels, but now strapped down in training armor with pauldrons that dwarf her frame - and her statement ends up sounding more like a question.
“I am thinking,” Petra says from across the training hall, where she’d ducked behind a training dummy to hide her laughter when she’d seen Annette, “that we are needing to get you better fitted armor.”
Annette swings her arm and points her axe at Petra, except it looks more like the axe swings Annette around with the sheer momentum of the thing.The move is enough to send Sylvain into another peal of laughter, and Ingrid feels her own lips twitch. She clamps her hand over her mouth as Annette says, addressing Petra, “At least you have a solution.”
There’s a wheezing noise as Sylvain wipes his eyes and stands up, still grinning at the sight in front of him. “I promise we’re not laughing at you, Annie - “ he begins in a sing-song voice, and it seems like Annette’s finally had enough; she raises her axe in a twirl over her head and charges Sylvain with a battle cry of triumph.
Sylvain dances out of the way easily, ducking and rolling for his own axe, propped up against a pillar nearby. There’s a much more calculating glint in his eyes now as he circles Annette, grinning; Annette is good with axes, but it’s not her specialty, not in the way it is for Sylvain.
Ingrid takes a few steps back, leaning against her own spear and watching the two fight, a smile still dancing across her features. She remembers a time, long ago, when Annette had always clutched her training sword and tried her best to be partnered up with Mercedes during morning drills, because Mercedes would doze while standing up most of the time and let Annette off easy. Now, Mercedes is sleeping properly, still cheerfully refusing to get up for morning training, and Annette is leaping nimbly into the blind spots in Sylvain’s range, trying her best to match his pace.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Petra approach her, sheathing her sword. “Fascinating, is it not? Annette’s new skills?”
Ingrid laughs gently. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”
“I am happy she is able to meld together magic and weapons,” Petra muses. “The only other person I know like that is Dorothea.”
Ingrid’s heart lurches, pounding harder against her ribcage like it wants to be let out. She frowns and ignores the thundering pulse in her ears as she murmurs, “Yes, Dorothea was skilled with a sword.”
Petra frowns. “Is skilled with a sword, right?”
“What?”
“Is.” Petra emphasizes. “In your language, is means things that are still happening, correct?”
“I - I suppose so, yes,” Ingrid says, falteringly. “I’m not - it wasn’t meant to be - I mean, of course Dorothea is still good with a sword, just as good as she is with her tomes.”
Petra hums thoughtfully, her gaze sharp as she stares Ingrid down, and Ingrid fidgets under it. Her own tumultuous tangle of emotions over Dorothea is forgotten, for just a moment, as the weight of Petra’s own life presses uncomfortably against Ingrid’s careless words.
“I know what you meant,” Petra says finally, one of her hands drifting down to rest on the sheath of her sword. “I remember when you were teaching Dorothea. You liked her very much.”
“I didn’t,” Ingrid snaps back automatically, her face flushing red. Her eyes dart around despite herself, her gaze desperate as she tries to map out if anyone is near enough to have heard Petra’s accusation. It takes a second for her terror to abate and the sinking shame to really set in as she turns Petra’s words over in her mind; Petra probably meant she liked Dorothea as a friend, as a fellow classmate - all normal things that people want and feel.
“I see,” Petra says evenly. Ingrid sighs and thinks about backtracking again and trying to clarify that she doesn’t hate Dorothea, but there’s a lump in her throat that she can’t seem to get the words out against. She swallows and looks back at Annette, who’s switched to throwing spears of magic every few swings, tilting the fight in her favor as Sylvain desperately dodges. The crackling beams of white light slow down for just a moment, and Ingrid remembers what it looked like when Dorothea threw them - always so artfully careless, her slender fingers curled upwards like it was another move at the opera.
It’s been years, and Ingrid can’t seem to let go of those tiny things, the wisps of memories and feelings she doesn’t want. She locked that up for a good reason, and she refuses to let go of that now; not when Dorothea isn’t here, not when she’s the enemy, not when Ingrid has been killing the other woman’s countrymen for the last five years of her life.
“You should be thinking about what you actually feel, then,” Petra says, interrupting Ingrid’s depressingly downward bout of thoughts. “Before you see her again.”
Ingrid stiffens and feels the same cold fear from before slithering down her neck. “I won’t,” she snaps.
Because she won’t see Dorothea again, and after kissing her like that and handing her heart over so desperately - she doesn’t want to see Dorothea again.
.
It had been - the suddenness of everything. The war. The professor’s disappearance. The notice that Empire troops had been sent out to capture all of them, that they were no longer safe in Garrag Mach.
The war. Who, in their lifetime, ever thought they’d face a war?
The Empire students had packed quickly and quietly to leave. Ingrid had gotten up early to scout - which had been terrifying to do for real, and not just as a drill - and she’d seen Dorothea tying her hair up, dressed in her riding leathers. Without even meaning to, she had changed direction until she’d come to a stop in front of Dorothea.
“I’m going back,” Dorothea had said with a sad little smile. No greeting, nothing; Ingrid had felt like Dorothea could have seen every part of Ingrid’s scared little heart, the way it was finally facing the reality of the girl in front of her belonging to a place that Ingrid couldn’t have.
“You don’t have to,” Ingrid had blurted out. “I know you don’t - this can’t be what you want.”
Dorothea had laughed. That laugh - in her memories, it was musical and bright, like the splash of water on a summer day, like wind chimes through an open doorway. Everything about Dorothea, in Ingrid’s memory, was like that - brighter and more beautiful than life itself, leaving behind a hollow ache of how empty and flat it seemed without her.
“Ingrid,” Dorothea had said, shaking her head. “I’ve never had what I wanted.”
And that - that couldn’t be right, that wasn’t fair, not for someone like Dorothea, who fell asleep in the library because she stayed up too late writing operas, who saved the best delicacies from the Black Eagle’s food tables for Ingrid, who tried so hard to be Ingrid’s friend no matter how uninteresting Ingrid was - that couldn’t be it. Dorothea deserved everything.
“What do you want?” Ingrid had asked, swallowing hard. Dorothea had frowned for a moment, and then she’d reached out with shaking fingers and smoothed down the collar of Ingrid’s academy jacket.
“You know it doesn’t work like that,” she’d said, and then she’d smiled flatly, a terrifying blankness in her gaze.
“We can protect you,” Ingrid had said quickly. The worst part had been that she hadn’t really even known if that was true.
Dorothea had leaned forward, quicker than Ingrid could track, and she’d kissed Ingrid on the cheek, just a brief brush of her lips before she pulled away, her smile suddenly and beautifully real as she’d laughed a little, almost breathlessly.
“If I had any hope left, Ingrid, I’d have given it all to you,” Dorothea had said, eyes glittering with amusement, still charming despite everything.
What could have Ingrid done with that? Her heart had stuttered in her chest, tight and afraid, and before she’d known what she was doing she’d reached for Dorothea, hooking an arm around her neck and dragging her close, too close, and then she’d been kissing Dorothea, which had not been in the plan at all.
For just a moment, the world had suspended into stillness around her, and everything she knew narrowed down to just Dorothea, in her arms. There was a tentative hand finding purchase on Ingrid’s waist, fingers gripping the fabric of her tunic too tightly, a broken, breathy cry coming from one or both of them. Dorothea’s lips were so warm, so soft, and Ingrid had finally understood why all the other girls had made such a big deal about kissing. It made the other person so real, so fragile beneath you, beside you, touching you.
I would never have loved Glenn, Ingrid had thought, deliriously, and the thought had lodged under her ribs painfully, like a knife twisting into some old wound. It had dragged her back to reality, and Ingrid had stumbled back in horror, pushing Dorothea away.
Dorothea had looked stunned. She’d stood there, her hands still outstretched from where she’d been gripping Ingrid a little too hard only moments ago. She’d looked - worn down. Small.
“I - “ Dorothea had sounded unsure. “Ingrid.”
Ingrid had flushed with shame, hot and painful and gripping, and she’d ran. And she’d kept running for five years, and she’d never had to think about it, and she’d never wanted to think about it; and then one morning, a few weeks into their mission to reclaim Garrag Mach, Bernadetta and Yuri had land in the courtyard with a bedraggled Dorothea - still dressed in opera finery - and even through the assembled crowd of panicked foot soldiers and guards, Dorothea’s eyes find hers. Burning.
Accusatory.
.
Ingrid is very good at avoiding Dorothea. She’d gotten good at it years ago, before she’d even thought to put a name to the tightly coiled knot of emotions that seemed to erupt in her every time Dorothea looked her way, and she uses that knowledge ruthlessly as she goes everywhere she knows Dorothea won’t be.
She ends up running into other people often, though, as a result. She goes to the cathedral so often that Mercedes notices.
“This is a little odd now,” Mercedes says amicably one morning, when Ingrid chooses to sit in the pews instead of sitting near Dorothea at breakfast. Dorothea had stared at her as she’d left, gaze unreadable.
“It’s not odd,” Ingrid says defensively. “I’m a follower of the Church as well.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re praying here.”
“I could be.”
“Ingrid,” Mercedes says reproachfully. “Annie tells me you’ve been missing morning drills and breakfast more often now, and you’re here instead.”
Ingrid makes a face. “You’ve been missing morning drills, Mercedes, I’m hardly who you need to be worrying about.”
“Dorothea’s been catching me up,” Mercedes says gaily. “She understands that I’m trying to minimize my physical exertion.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ingrid mutters, ducking her head and tracing over an embroidered flower on the cuff of her sleeve. Her mind summons an image of Dorothea in training leathers, hair tied back, the triumph on her face at a successful parry.
Mercedes makes a surprised little noise. “Oh,” she says, “Dorothea? That’s it?”
Ingrid groans. “I knew it,” she says, “I knew everyone was reading me like an open book.”
“Well, no, not quite,” Mercedes says, shaking her head and turning to face Ingrid fully. “I won’t pretend to understand your struggles, but surely…whatever the problem is, it can be cleared up if you speak to her at least once?”
Ingrid snorts. “Right,” she says, quieter. “Because talking is really my strong suit.”
“You never know,” Mercedes shrugs, and then looks up at the ceiling of the cathedral, seemingly lost in thought. “You can’t avoid her forever, but more importantly you can’t avoid yourself forever.”
Ingrid waits for a second, drumming her fingers along the wooden seat, and then gives up when it seems clear that Mercedes doesn’t want to elaborate. “I don’t - everyone keeps trying to tell me to - feel my emotions, and talk everything out, or - but you don’t get it - what do you think is going to happen when this war ends, Mercedes?”
Mercedes frowns. “It’s hard to say, isn’t it?”
“It’s not,” Ingrid shakes her head furiously. “Galatea will still be poor, and I’ll still have to walk on eggshells as a lady knight. The world doesn’t change overnight and I can’t let my family suffer for that kind of dream.”
“Ingrid, you - “
“We all have a duty,” Ingrid continues, her voice growing thick even as she fights to keep it even. Mercedes’ gaze flickers to somewhere beyond Ingrid and then back to her, unsure. “We have responsibilities, we have - everyone is acting like Byleth coming back is some fairy tale ending, but it’s not, it doesn’t change anything, it - why am I the only one who sees this?”
“Maybe because you’ve always been a pessimist,” an amused voice calls out from behind her, and Ingrid whirls, heart pounding, to see Dorothea sliding into the adjoining pew.
Ingrid’s heart stutters to a stop in her chest and she forgets how to breathe. “Dorothea,” she says, helpless. Dorothea smiles, quiet and content.
“Ingrid,” Dorothea says simply, and then she drapes her arm over the side of the pew and looks at Ingrid consideringly.
“You’re a hard person to find in the mornings,” Dorothea finally seems to settle for saying. “Taking up prayer now?”
Ingrid frowns, and then remembers with a start that she’s been avoiding Dorothea by...going to church.
“Uh,” she says hesitantly, “yes?”
Mercedes might as well not exist for the way that Ingrid can’t seem to do anything but look at Dorothea. It feels like this is all Ingrid’s life has been lately; a series of moments where she’s out of control, looking at the people around her, wondering how they have everything figured out. How life seems to be so effortless for everyone else but her.
“I didn’t know you to be so devout when we were at the Academy,” Dorothea says, her voice still airy and light. Ingrid shrugs, stilted.
“Times change. It’s a war,” she says shortly.
“Right,” Dorothea nods minutely, looking unconvinced. “Of course.”
There’s another long moment where they stare at each other, long and protracted, and Ingrid feels keenly aware of how she looks; the haphazard cut of her bangs, the carelessly patched glove, the half-fraying straps on her armor. She fidgets. Dorothea looks as elegant as always, her dress immaculate, the pleats of her skirt settling naturally into a fanned out, flower-like spiral.
Mercedes gently clears her throat. “Perhaps, Ingrid, we’d better get to breakfast if we want something to eat,” she offers. Ingrid snaps to attention, grateful for the excuse.
“Yes,” she says, straightening her stance. “Let’s. Dorothea, it’s good to see you.”
It’s an automatic platitude, one she’s given out a countless number of times. She is, after all, still a lady of Galatea; the ins and outs of being polite are drilled into her bones. Dorothea knows it, of course, just like she knows almost everything about Ingrid. The corners of her lips curl upward, her smile humorless, as she regards Ingrid.
“Of course,” Dorothea says. “Of course.
.
“You’re so uptight,” Dorothea had said one day in the library, dropping a stack of books with a loud thud right by Ingrid.
“I - how did you find me?” Ingrid had asked, mildly impressed at first - she’d been tucked away in a dusty, unused corner that, to her knowledge, only she and Ashe frequented - before the words had caught up to her and her face had flamed. “Hey!” she’d said indignantly. “That’s incredibly rude.”
“Hold on, I wasn’t finished with my sentence,” Dorothea had said soothingly, sliding into the chair opposite Ingrid with a warm smile. That had been the thing, hadn’t it; Dorothea, for all of her posturing and grandstanding, had always seemed nothing but genuine and kind to Ingrid. It had always been intoxicating to be on the receiving end of that. “You’re so uptight, that it’s a surprise to find you reading tales like these. I didn’t take you for a romance fan.”
Ingrid had instinctively shut the book and flipped it over, as if she could erase the thought of it from Dorothea’s memory. “It’s a good book,” she’d said defensively, her previous embarrassment over being called uptight fading and being replaced with embarrassment over being caught reading Swords and Shields.
Dorothea had laughed, her eyes crinkling with amusement as she’d steepled her fingers under her chin. “It’s a romance periodical, and I happen to know that this latest one is rather, shall we say, daring. More so than usual.”
“It’s - Dorothea!” Ingrid had groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Just say what you want to say. Please stop dancing around the subject.”
“Look,” Dorothea had laughed again, as if she couldn’t help it, warm and rich and so very fond for reasons that Ingrid had never understood, “I’m not going to make fun of you for reading what is essentially the most well-written trash in the Empire. I was going to ask if you wanted an advance of the next copy.”
Ingrid had been surprised enough to forget to be embarrassed. “What?”
Dorothea had shrugged, looking a little self-deprecating. “One of my patrons sent it to me. I don’t really have the patience to appreciate a book like that - I skimmed it, but it’s mostly sitting uselessly in my drawer. I saw you reading here, and, well - I thought you might enjoy it.”
“I - I would,” Ingrid had said, slowly, reluctantly. “But I can’t - “
“I insist,” Dorothea had said. “Though I’ll warn you now, it’s a bit different from the rest of the installments. The author’s trying something new, I think.”
“What does that mean?”
Dorothea had grown silent for a long moment, looking thoughtful, like she was trying to figure something out. Ingrid had waited. She’d never really been the patient type - a childhood spent chasing after Sylvain and Felix didn’t leave much in the way of patience - but she could have waited forever to hear out whatever Dorothea needed to say. There was no way she could have explained it, then, how parts of her she hadn’t known existed had come to life around the other girl.
“Well - just tell me what you think,” Dorothea had finally said, quieter this time. “When you finish the book.”
Many nights later, Ingrid had shut the cover of the advance copy, her face flaming scarlet, the words she reached over to kiss the other woman echoing in her mind alongside Dorothea’s voice, soft dulcet tones whispering what do you think?
.
She’s not trying to be cruel. She knows she is, though - knows that people have started whispering about how she doesn’t seem to be speaking with Dorothea anymore.
“You can’t run away from this forever,” Ashe tells her as they ride north to defend a supplying outpost - a mission that she had begged the professor to let her go on to avoid being assigned to kitchen duty with Dorothea.
“Try me,” Ingrid says simply. She wants to snap back something stronger to get him off her back, but there’s nothing she can say that doesn’t cross a line. Not when he looks forlorn all the time, not when she knows he’d give anything to be in the position she is now, instead of laying flowers across a grave.
“One day,” Ashe muses, “you’re going to see how difficult you’ve made things for yourself. You’re really going to laugh at all of it.”
She shrugs. “Maybe a little difficulty is what got me this far in life.”
Ashe makes a face, but doesn’t say anything in return. Everybody talks in oblique references around her now about whatever it is her problems are, but no one wants to actually say it out loud - not the way people hound Sylvain and Felix about each other, not the way people talk in hushed whispers about Byleth and His Highness. It seems like there’s something about Ingrid’s face that makes people want to back off.
She raises a hand without meaning to at that thought, and touches her cheeks, and then the side of her hair, instinctively, checking that the clip is still secured in place. Does it make her childish, to fidget like this?
It shouldn’t matter, not in the middle of a war, but sometimes it’s all she can think about. What do people think when they look at her? Do they see something ungainly in the way her hair frames her face? Do they see strength, grace - any of those virtues that were hammered into her?
Her horse snorts suddenly, tossing its mane back and forth as Sylvain rides up and falls into place beside her.
“What are we looking at?” he asks. “What’s the face for?”
Ingrid rolls her eyes. “There’s no face.”
Sylvain considers her, eyebrow cocked, and then twists in his saddle to look beyond Ingrid. “Ashe?”
“Ingrid is having a crisis,” Ashe says gravely, because he likes to stir up trouble when given the chance. Sylvain makes an irritatingly sympathetic noise, and Ingrid glares.
“I am ten seconds away from switching to Kyphon and flying,” she threatens. Sylvain holds up his hands in mock surrender.
“I’ll play nice, I’ll play nice,” he says, grinning. “Never let it be said that I didn’t come bearing gifts! And by gifts, I do mean this little book of legends I found in the market the other day.”
Ingrid is loath to admit how fast her mood changes upon hearing that. The unfortunate truth is that five years’ worth of monastery rubble and dust and bandit lootings haven’t provided the most stable environment to preserve Garrag Mach’s library in, and so the pickings are a little slim now in the library. Occasionally, a tome or two makes its way into the marketplace, and Ingrid and Ashe usually help each other snap those up when they can.
“Really?” she demands of Sylvain. “Show me.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Sylvain says, smiling fondly, and then he spends the next hour narrating out loud from a book. He does voices for all the characters, some solemn and full of weight, and others high-pitched and nasal. His voice is warm, genuine when he gets to the heart of the book, and like this the thought of what she looks like slips from that cold corner of her mind as she laughs, as they get to the supply outpost, as she fights, as she spends the night sharing a bottle of bad wine with Sylvain and Ashe.
There are more important things, she supposes, to worry about.
.
As the war begins to change course, the Empire starts bringing in specially conscripted Brigid mercenaries; Petra assembles a handful of them one morning and announces gravely that in order to counter that, she’s going to be training them in Brigid-style swordplay.
“Great,” Yuri says tiredly, crossing his arms. “Can the secrets of a country’s form of combat not be imparted at a reasonable time? Say, not at the crack of dawn?”
“No, the time is very important,” Petra says defensively. “It is a help to the breath work we must move through first. Brigid style requires very exact focus!”
Yuri pinches the bridge of his nose, but falls silent, shrugging his shoulders. Ingrid stifles a laugh, stretching out her shoulder. She’s grown used to early morning call-times for her patrols, and it feels nice to be stretching the limits of her skills with a sword.
Petra’s style of swordplay is more about tight, controlled bursts of action and strength, and Ingrid has always watched it a little curiously. Her own skills come from the Faerghus school of thought, which demands dexterity and speed above anything else - unless you’re wielding an axe, which Ingrid refuses to touch. She’s not a woodcutter, Sylvain, thank you very much.
It’s a crisp morning, the chill in the air hinting at the last, lingering remains of winter. Ingrid shrugs out of her jacket, shivering, and does her best to follow along with Petra’s explanations for the basics of what to watch out for when facing Brigid knights. The stances are a little awkward to follow, her posture stiff - Yuri, to no one’s surprise and to Felix’s irritation, picks it up the fastest - but it's a pleasant way to pass the time.
Petra pairs them off to practice and walks through, helping and switching out the pairs as she sees fit. Ingrid spends some time gamely losing to Yuri before Petra dismisses him and moves to her side instead.
“You will want to be angling your wrist differently,” Petra says, demonstrating. “And do not be afraid to drive forward.” Ingrid nods, and they practice together, committing the moves down to muscle memory. Petra’s eyes are narrowed, focused, assessing both Ingrid and everyone else scattered through the training room, but she looks happy, her lips curving into a slight, good-natured smile.
“It’s nice,” Ingrid offers up, a little breathlessly as they continue to step and lunge in sync. “Seeing you so in your element.”
“My element,” Petra echoes, her smile growing. “I am liking the sound of that. I enjoy sharing my culture with people.”
Ingrid thinks carefully about her words. “Even though it’s…to defeat them?”
Petra shakes her head, switching her blade to her other hand and turning to face Ingrid, mirroring her stance instead of paralleling it. “There have always been sellswords in Brigid, just like anywhere else. I wish for freedom for my country. That will not come with secrets, and I need the help of Faerghus.”
It’s a very plain statement, very like Petra. She’s honest about everything she can be honest about. Ingrid admires her deeply for that, but it’s not a comfortable admiration. She knows where Petra’s honesty comes from, and it’s got more to do with the Empire using her as a pawn than it does with whatever Petra really feels or wants.
“You are thinking too hard about this,” Petra says, sounding amusing. “It is not a matter of consequence, defeating those from Brigid. In war I have no hesitation. I think that…those of us that have a duty to our people, our land, our ancestors. We do not have the comfort of stopping and thinking too hard about it.”
In a strange way, it makes sense. Ingrid glances at the mark under Petra’s eyes, the tattoos snaking their way across her biceps.
“Would you have it be different?” Ingrid asks. “Once you’re out of this war and on the way to reclaiming Brigid’s independence.”
“Yes,” Petra nods emphatically. “But it is already different. When I chose to be here with your king, I chose to follow what I wanted and what my people wanted. I wanted freedom. I wanted it my way, not the Empire way. And I will get it.”
Ingrid lunges forward, drives her sword into an imaginary target and holds the forward momentum instead of leaping back, like she’s been taught all her life. She’s breathing hard, hearing Petra’s words echo back again. I wanted it my way. And I will get it.
“Just like that!” Petra says, beaming. “Just like that.”
.
Winter thaws into the beginnings of spring, and Ingrid wakes up feeling old suddenly, like her birthday just caught up to her bones. She sits on her bed, motionless, for longer than she should, and decides to skip morning training.
She walks out to the crumbling bridge between the monastery and the academy instead, trailing her hand over the overgrown ivy trellises and thinking about all those hours she spent up here, watching the sprawling valley below. She isn’t sure now if that was wasted time or not; she just knows that sometimes she wants to run away until she’s just a speck on the mist-covered mountainside, until no one can see her from this bridge.
She hears someone approach, and looks up to see Dorothea walking towards her, a guarded look on her face. Ingrid wants to make some kind of excuse, wants to walk away, but she’s tired and melancholy, and so instead she stands still and watches her approach.
“Hi,” Dorothea says when she gets closer, sounding surprised. Ingrid gives her a half-smile.
“Hi yourself,” she says.
“Sylvain sent me to find you. Said it wasn’t like you to miss morning training,” Dorothea continues, carefully leaning against a solid-looking part of the wall.
Ingrid snorts. “It’s not like him to be concerned about morning training.”
The corner of Dorothea’s mouth curls up, and Ingrid can feel her smile grow in response. Up here, in the quiet and stillness of the morning, she almost forgets why she’s been so scared of this, for so long.
“Do you want to get breakfast?” Dorothea finally asks. Ingrid thinks for a moment, and the familiar knot of nerves begins to claw at her insides.
But she remembers, a lifetime ago, the feeling of Dorothea’s hand on her waist and her voice in her ear. Focus.
“Yes,” Ingrid says finally. “Breakfast sounds lovely.”
A smile breaks out over Dorothea’s face, a real one, and Ingrid forgets how to breathe.
.
They eat in silence. It’s peaceful, the light streaming in and casting everything with a soft gray glow. Ingrid finishes two sticky buns before she feels the weight of eyes on her. She looks up.
“You cut your hair,” Dorothea says, as if she’s been waiting for Ingrid to look up. Ingrid shrugs.
“I did.”
It had been less of a planned thing and more a moment of anger, standing in front of her mirror in House Galatea, the material grimy with a layer of dirt that she hadn’t gotten to scrubbing down because they’d let go of their last house servant, because they were in a war and despite all the money they’d scrounged together they’d had to make a choice between repairing a broken village well or paying for manor staff. So they’d made the choice, and sent the servant packing.
She’d looked in the mirror and seen an echo of her mother - tired, eyes sweet and kind, face pleasantly framed by locks of blonde hair. Her mother had been a wonderful lady, elegant and graceful and all those things that ladies of the kingdom were supposed to want or to be. Dorothea would probably have liked her.
Ingrid’s mother had never wanted anything for Ingrid but happiness; she’d been the one to send Ingrid for knight training, and she’d let Ingrid pick up a lance before she’d needed to pick up an embroidery needle. And every time Ingrid looked in the mirror, she’d seen the daughter that her mother had left behind when she’d died - all strength and chivalry, and nothing graceful left to be the Lady of Galatea. So she’d cut all the hair off and pretended it didn’t hurt.
It had been Felix and Sylvain that had brought her hair ties, their gazes careful as they’d tied the ribbons in with a care that she hadn’t seen from them in years. She hadn’t cried when her mother died, but she’d cried then, breaking down in that room in front of that grimy mirror, and her friends had held her and said nothing as a war raged on outside. She had never felt smaller in her life.
“It’s nice,” Dorothea says, and Ingrid jolts back to the present. She smiles ruefully.
“It’s not,” she says. “But thank you for being nice about it.” She looks back down at her plate, pushing a bit of sticky-sweet glaze around with her fork.
“It is,” Dorothea says, insistent. “Take the compliment.”
Ingrid still doesn’t look up. She doesn’t want to see whatever vulnerable softness Dorothea’s decided to display again, whatever charm and warmth she has. She doesn’t want to lose herself like she did all those years ago when Dorothea left. She doesn’t want to live with this burning uncertainty in the pit of her stomach anymore.
But in her mind she sees that reflection of herself, years ago, shorn-off hair and wild eyes staring out of a face made sharp by exhaustion and hunger. That girl, she thinks, would have given everything to look up and see Dorothea staring back, even if only for a moment, even if it had hurt. She owes it to herself to see this through.
She looks up. Dorothea’s smile is hopeful, her eyes shining with something. Maybe tears. Maybe anger. Does it matter? She’s here, in front of Ingrid.
“Thank you,” Ingrid says.
Dorothea laughs. It’s just as bright as Ingrid remembers. Something in her unfurls, like the first bloom of spring.
.
Spring overtakes Fodlan with a vengeance, and the warmth seems to herald some sort of tide turning. Supplies begin to pour in from every corner of the continent, old allies and friends find their way to the castle, and Byleth somehow manages to pull all of them - especially Dimitri - from the brink of loss.
“Not to be the bearer of common sense,” Sylvain says when she brings this up during one of their morning training duels, “but Byleth’s not all-powerful. I think that you might have had some part in this.”
“I know that, don’t make fun of me,” Ingrid says sternly, blocking his incoming strike and aiming low as she presses forward. To her eternal chagrin, Sylvain is also good with swords, just enough to be mildly irritating about it and put up a fight when Petra isn’t free for Ingrid to spar with.
“I’m not,” Sylvain says defensively, whacking her wooden training sword away. “You idolize and criticize Byleth in the same breath. I don’t think the truth is nearly as interesting as the fantastic story you’ve created in your head - ow, Ingrid, really?” He rubs at his elbow as Ingrid springs back, feeling triumphant.
“Point to me,” she says, feeling smug. “Again.”
Sylvain rolls his eyes. “Can you let me say something nice about you before you beat me up again?”
Ingrid’s lips twitch despite her best efforts to keep her face straight. “Make it quick,” she says, but she can hear the fond edge in her voice. Sylvain must hear it too, because he looks triumphant as he talks.
“Byleth helped us come together, but we fought a war for five years, alright? That counts for something. Ingrid, you rebuilt an entire wing of Dimitri’s army by yourself. Do you honestly think people don’t see that when they look at you?”
She shifts her feet, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “It’s not like that,” she protests weakly.
Sylvain’s voice is soft. “It is,” he says. He slings his sword over his shoulder and walks closer, shaking his head and reaching out to ruffle Ingrid’s hair. She ducks out of the way, grinning, and spins around to tap him across the shoulders with the wooden blade. “Ingrid.”
Ingrid doesn’t know what it is that’s changed. Maybe it’s the way the sun is just right in the mornings now, warm enough to fly faster and harder without freezing in the clouds. Maybe it’s the lingering taste of sweetness in the back of her mouth from the honey buns she’d had for breakfast. Maybe it’s her, worn soft around the edges from years of fighting to see her friends again.
But this time, when Sylvain whirls around and looks at her meaningfully, his gaze caught between exasperation and amusement, she doesn’t feel like there’s some impossible puzzle here that she can’t crack. She doesn’t feel like she’s pounding on some invisible wall between her and everyone else, wondering what they’re seeing that she isn’t.
“Sylvain,” she says, hearing the softness in her own voice. “I mean, it’s not like that. I get it. I really do.”
He pauses, one eyebrow raised questioningly. “You do?”
“I do,” she says. “I’m not lost in some fantasy. I just - I like the thought of Byleth at the helm alongside His Highness, both of them larger than life. I like the idea of us rallying behind her. I like the idea of it all.”
Ingrid doesn’t even realize how much she likes it until she says it out loud and she sees the vision she has in her mind’s eye. Golden rays of light, piercing through from Dimitri’s lance, cutting through the dark edges that curl around their crest weapons, made of bone and blood. A new chapter, a page turned in the stories of knights and gods.
Sylvain is still staring at her, looking thoughtful. “Does that really help?”
She shrugs. “Yeah,” she says. “It does.” She twirls her sword in her hand, feeling lighter. “Come on, don’t slack off by getting philosophical on me. Let’s go again.”
“Alright, alright,” Sylvain says, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “My pride can’t take much more, let me grab my axe and even the playing field a little?”
“Sure, sure, we can put the training wheels on this for you,” Ingrid says dryly, and Sylvain rolls his eyes good-naturedly before walking to the end of the hall to replace his weapon. Ingrid amuses herself as he does that by flipping the training sword in her hand, catching it with a backhand grip and then tossing it in the air again. Hardly practical maneuvers for an airborne battle, but - it’s certainly a fun little trick, to switch stances like this.
Sylvain makes a big deal of wolf-whistling at her as he comes back, wiggling his eyebrows as he comes closer. She moves to whack him gently across his shoulder for that, and he catches her sword when she steps closer to reach him and says, his voice low, “Don’t look, but Dorothea’s watching you.”
Ingrid freezes, her eyes going wide and her cheeks warming.
“How,” she hisses, “am I supposed to not look at that!”
“Be cool,” Sylvain stresses, and then he lets her sword go and moves into a ready position, slinging his axe over his shoulder. “C’mon, don’t back out on me now.”
Ingrid swears under breath and shifts her stance. She’s still a little disbelieving of Sylvain’s last statement to her, but Sylvain doesn’t give her a chance to think about it before he launches into a series of offensive attacks. He uses his height and his raw strength to his advantage, pressing her back and forcing her to swing around to compensate for his movement.
As she turns, she realizes what he’s done, shifting their position across the training ring until she’s now where he stood a couple of minutes ago, and like this she can see Dorothea, halfway through strapping on her arm bracers. She meets Dorothea’s gaze, and even from this distance she can see the way Dorothea startles at that, like she hadn’t been expecting Ingrid to look, and gives a hurried little wave before turning away.
Ingrid smiles back, automatically, but can’t help the tiny frisson of nervous heat that skitters through her skin. She could have sworn Dorothea was blushing as she turned away.
Whack. She feels the flat of Sylvain’s axe slam into her arm, hard. She winces, rubbing at the spot as she springs away, and Sylvain points his axe at her accusingly.
“Be. Cool,” he emphasizes. Ingrid shrugs helplessly.
.
They march onward, pressing against the edges of the Empire, and begin to unravel the strings of whatever grand plan has been puppeting Fodlan for so long. It goes beyond just Edelgard and her actions; Ingrid leaves their daily council meetings feeling worn out, thinking about how many of her childhood ideals have been built on lies.
“Chin up,” Sylvain tells her as a handful of them head to the dining hall together. “There’s real fruit on the menu tonight, not just the dried stuff. Springtime, you know.”
“You know, I miss those Fraldarius apple orchards,” Ingrid says wistfully. “I’d kill for those.”
Felix snorts. “You might have to. I think we cut down most of it to make room for stronger crops, for the war.”
Ingrid gives a pained grimace as she pushes open the doors to the hall. It’s lively tonight, which is a good sign, and there’s someone playing a fiddle in the corner. “You kept some, though, right? Maybe you can replant it after.”
Felix grunts, which for Ingrid’s own peace of mind she decides is Felix-speak for that’s a lovely idea Ingrid, thank you. They load up their plates with food and begin to look for seats when Ingrid catches Dorothea’s eye, and the other woman waves them over.
“Past the ignoring stage, I see,” Sylvain whispers under his breath as they walk over, looking meaningfully at Ingrid as Ingrid does her best to ignore him. Dorothea is her friend again, just like their Academy days, and Ingrid is very determined to not lose her mind over it, because she doesn’t want things to go sideways again. What exactly going sideways might entail, she’s not entirely sure anymore, because being friends with Dorothea again also means being exposed to all of Dorothea’s wonderful charm.
“Ingrid!” Dorothea says, waving prettily. “Over here, there’s a seat for you!”
“And the rest of us, we can just stand?” Sylvain asks good-naturedly, even as Ferdinand, sitting opposite to Dorothea, makes room on his side of the table as well, beaming at all of them.
“Good evening!” Ferdinand says, exuberant as always. “I see that you’ve all come to partake of today’s feast as well!”
Ingrid slides into the seat next to Dorothea, feeling something restless coil under her skin as Dorothea adjusts and shifts closer to Ingrid, their shoulders touching. She coughs, clearing her throat and looking up, right into the eyes of a very amused Sylvain.
“Feast?” Felix’s voice cuts through, dripping with disdain. “You’ve got too much excitement about these things.”
“Not really,” Ferdinand says, undeterred by Felix’s usual attitude, though Ingrid catches Dorothea leveling a glare at Felix. “Some of these ingredients I’ve only seen as imports in the Empire markets. Or perhaps it was Aegir’s location that was the issue.”
Dorothea hums thoughtfully. “Truthfully, from my travels, at the very least, it just seemed like there weren’t very good trade routes between the countries. I believe that some of these things were rare simply by virtue of rough roads.”
“I may be betraying my countrymen,” Ferdinand says gravely, his eyes shining as he puts his hand over his heart, “but at least I do so in the company of plums as sweet as spun sugar.”
Felix snorts at that. “Morbid,” he says, but he looks mildly impressed. “Are sweet plums really that much of an oddity in the Empire?” Ferdinand shrugs.
“They tend to skew smaller and sourer, yes. And well, you have to be a little morbid, in times like these. Right, Thea?”
“Maybe a little,” Dorothea says, looking down at her plate. “I don’t suppose war is a thing that one can walk out of the same. Especially if you’re fighting against your own countrymen.”
Ingrid’s kept herself busy shoveling food into her mouth while the others talked, but she watches now as something drops in Dorothea’s usually cheerful demeanor, and she carefully puts her fork down.
“You don’t walk out the same,” Ingrid says slowly, “but you’re also not walking out with only the worst parts of you. It’s - I don’t think you can balance it or reduce it down like that to good or bad, morbid or hopeful.”
“Like sweet and sour plums,” Ferdinand adds helpfully.
.
She starts a letter to her father.
Dear Father, she writes. Though the war drags on, I am well. Are you in good health? I received the information you enclosed with your last letter -
She pauses and looks over at the list of eligible bachelors her father has neatly penned out for her. He’s helpfully ranked the knights at the top. My dear Ingrid, they would be staunch supporters of your duties to the kingdom, I am sure - whatever shape that may take. Your mother would be so proud to see you now, soaring across the skies, like a legend in the making…
She crumples up the letter in her hand and starts anew. Dear Father, thank you for kind words as always. Everything I do, I owe it to you and Mother. Your list is -
“Stupid,” Ingrid finishes for herself, under her breath, and then she groans and leans back in her chair. Words have never been her strong suit, so she has no idea how she’s supposed to communicate to her father that she’s tired of feeling like a rope is tightening around her heart everytime she sees her father’s list of suitors for her. She just wants to be able to breathe again without the fear of Galatea collapsing down on her shoulders.
“Dear Father,” she mutters, staring at a spot on the ceiling, “do you think that one of your other children might be interested in marriage? If we work fast, we can still get a knight to fall in love with your son, maybe, since your daughter apparently has the social grace of a Noa fruit.”
There’s a laugh from the other side of her door, and then a knock, and Ingrid scrambles to right herself and hastily put away her papers. Only one person can hear so well through the walls, and she hurriedly lets a grinning Ashe into her room.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she says stiffly. He raises an eyebrow.
“You never want to hear it,” he begins, and she groans as he barrels on, unperturbed by her miserable state. “But if you did want to hear it, I would tell you that you’re still overcomplicating things.”
“You’re one to talk,” she grumbles. “Avoiding Dedue by hiding in my room?”
He flushes crimson, looking guilty. “How did you know that?”
“I guessed,” Ingrid says, and now it’s her turn to grin as Ashe splutters indignantly. “You never come up here normally.”
“It’s the second floor, I don’t need to be here,” Ashe says defensively. “And Dedue only comes up here to see His Highness, it works out perfectly.”
“Uh-huh,” Ingrid says. “Now that you’re here, you can help me write a letter to my father.”
Ashe hums as he comes over to her desk and picks up the one clean draft she has left, skimming through the few standard lines she has asking about her family and their lands. “You’re telling him you don’t want to marry?”
“It’s - more complicated than that,” Ingrid says, perching on the edge of her bed and frowning. “It’s not that I don’t want to marry, I just think…marrying any of these people would be a disaster. At least with Glenn, I knew and trusted him.”
Ashe’s face goes through a complicated series of expressions that Ingrid can’t quite decipher. “You said you loved him.”
“I mean,” Ingrid says, feeling her own face heat up as she hears the words she’d used to toss around so lightly echoed back at her, “I thought I did? I was - very young.”
“You were,” Ashe agrees, sitting down on her chair. “That’s why I was so surprised, I think. You don’t seem the type to have been…” He pauses, looking thoughtful, and his voice is careful and measured when he speaks again. “You don’t seem the type to have been so quick with your emotions at such a young age, especially when you seemed a touch more conflicted while we were at the Academy.”
Ingrid laughs bitterly. “A fun way of saying I had convinced myself that I loved an arranged match to a boy who died before I even held anyone’s hand.”
Ashe winces, and Ingrid hastily tries to soften her words. “I’m not saying that I regret anything that happened,” she says, giving Ashe a small, reassuring smile. “Glenn was still my friend, and I cared a great deal about him. I thought…I always thought that was good enough, that was the best I would get. I don’t think I ever really understood that there were other options that I had missed, somehow.”
“When did you realize?” Ashe asks. “That your situation wasn’t - ideal, so to speak?”
Ingrid remembers it so clearly - the smothering heat of Aillel, the glint of metal and blood slicing towards her, the cold look of contempt that her would-be suitor had given her. The tight grip of Dorothea’s hand on Ingrid’s arm as she’d pulled Ingrid behind her, so furious about the deception that she’d surged forward to the head of the rescue party. Her careful touch across Ingrid’s temple afterwards, healing a sluggishly bleeding wound. The mirth and lightness in her gaze as she’d taken the ring Ingrid had offered her, her eyes crinkling with affection.
Ingrid had felt - weightless, in that moment. Breathless. Like she was flying, light as the clouds themselves, but also like she was burning from the inside out, right from her heart. Could she have given it a name, back then? She can’t even name it now.
But it had shown her that she was capable of feeling something else.
“Dorothea,” Ingrid says out loud, quietly. She sighs, and then shakes her head, laughing at herself. “I know, I know. I’m making it more difficult than it needs to be, I should talk to her, so on and so forth. I’ve heard your spiel, I know the routine.”
Ashe has propped his chin up in his hands, and he looks at Ingrid fondly. “At least you can say it out loud and admit it now.”
She gives him a wry look. “I’ve been worn down.”
“It’s not such a bad thing, is it?”
Ingrid shrugs, tipping back in her chair and crossing her arms. It’s a careful thing, to dance around the edge of what she’s feeling without giving it enough weight to drown her, but she’s getting better at it. Maybe one day she can face it down whole, unblinking, lance in hand.
“I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” Ingrid says. “Maybe just a part of getting older, I suppose. Like sweet and sour plums.”
“I was with you until the plums,” Ashe says. “I’m going to just pretend that part makes sense. But…” he trails off, and looks amused at nothing in particular, smiling up at the ceiling.
“What?”
“I just think,” he says softly, “that you’ve come so far from who you were five years ago. It’s nice. To see you grow, I mean. You used to be so - tense.”
Ingrid glances to the side reflexively, where her mirror sits propped up against the wall. She sees the same face staring back out, angular and sharp, worn down with the same sort of bittersweet regret that all of them carry. The ribbons do soften her face, she thinks as she touches them.
She smiles, and the girl in the mirror smiles back, soft and secretive.
.
The first time Ingrid kissed a girl was at the stables, and five years later she feels a strange sort of nostalgia as she leads Kyphon to his stall and sees Dorothea in her riding leathers, waiting for her.
“You haven’t asked me to join the scouting forces with Velox,” Dorothea announces, like she’s made some sort of discovery. Ingrid blinks.
“Er - did you want to?” she asks as she walks Kyphon into his stall and unsaddles him. “I can add you to the afternoon roster, maybe, the last morning shift just took off, they won’t need to be relieved for - “
Dorothea makes a disapproving sound as she leans against the doorway of the stall. “No, I mean that - you haven’t asked me to join at all. I thought you would have, since pegasi are in short supply, and then I thought - well, she’s avoiding me - “
“I wasn’t,” Ingrid protests, lying through her teeth, because she’ll be damned if she’s going to admit that to Dorothea.
“ - you were, and then now we’re speaking again and you still - don’t you need every set of wings you can get up there? What’s so wrong with my combat and flight skills that you haven’t asked me to help?”
Ingrid stares in astonishment as Dorothea’s words seem to gain momentum as she speaks, her eyebrows drawing downward and her mouth set in an unhappy line. She’s - pouting for lack of a better word. It should be irritating but this expression - like so many others - looks unfairly good on her face.
“It’s not that,” Ingrid says slowly, smoothing a hand over Kyphon’s side as she walks closer to Dorothea. “We’re not stretched as thin as it seems like. Velox is a magnificent beast, who needs to be able to carry you far and fast in battle in case we’re in need of another medic. I don’t want to waste him on patrols.”
“It wouldn’t be a waste, I want to do my part with Velox - “
“Dorothea,” Ingrid says gently. “I’ve been training pegasi my whole life, and it seemed cruel to use every last one to draw blood on the battlefield. Some things should be kept whole during the war. I’ve trained Kyphon for war; you trained Velox to heal, to fly.”
Dorothea frowns, looks down and then back up, her brow furrowing like she wants to argue, and Ingrid takes a half step closer to continue, her voice rising. “I don’t think you even want to scout. You flinch when you see them circling, you steel yourself and grit your teeth when we go out to fight - I see you, Dorothea, you already push yourself past your boundaries for us. I would not - I will not ask for more of you.”
She only means to explain her philosophy with the pegasus knights, with the way that she conducts battle - but she’s never been terribly good at hiding her feelings, and she ends up half-lecturing poor Dorothea, who now looks at Ingrid with an unreadable expression on her face, her gaze piercing.
“Is this - is this a gentle way of telling me I’m not good at flying Velox?” Dorothea asks.
Ingrid feels pinned to the spot, but her heart flutters in her chest. It’s an oddly exhilarating feeling, being the sole focus of someone’s attention. A little terrifying, too, as it always is when she looks at Dorothea and finds her looking back. “No,” she says slowly. “It’s my way of saying that you’re meant for kinder things after the war, Dorothea.”
“I - “ Dorothea’s eyes narrow as she falters. She still looks - like there’s something she’s holding back. “You don’t know that.”
There’s an answer on the tip of Ingrid’s tongue that’s almost automatic. She can’t help herself; she glances at Dorothea’s lips and remembers the last time they were here.
Ingrid can hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. “Don’t I?” she asks. “What do you want, Dorothea?”
Dorothea freezes, her entire body stiffening.
“I remember,” she says carefully, her tone measured and even, “the girl that asked me that question five years ago.”
Ingrid is keenly aware of every inch of space between them. Dorothea’s eyes are so very, very green, and Ingrid finds that the words tumble out of her before she can physically stop herself. “I meant it then, too.”
“All of it?”
Ingrid nods, not trusting herself to speak.
Dorothea’s gaze slides just to the left of Ingrid, unfocused and lost in some kind of thought. Silence stretches between them, and this time Ingrid lets it sit. Somewhere, someone is ringing the monastery bells for one of the morning services, and the melody of it drifts across the stable yard, restrained and achingly sweet. Ingrid feels it down to her bones.
“Dorothea - “ Ingrid begins, feeling like she has to take the step, take the leap, before it’s too late and the edge of whatever this is crumbles out from under her “I - “
And then suddenly Dorothea’s gaze hardens and her fingers are reaching for Ingrid’s collar, pulling her close, too close, her fingers trembling - and then she’s kissing Ingrid. Kissing her softly, hesitant, eyes screwed shut, and so Ingrid closes her eyes too, reaches for Dorothea, grips the back of her riding tunic too tightly as she crushes the other woman to her chest. It feels just like she remembers - the awful tenderness of holding someone like this. Or maybe it isn’t someone, it’s just Dorothea, the way it’s always been.
“You - “ Dorothea says as she pulls back. Her voice is strained, like she’s about to cry. “You can’t go around saying things like that, you know. A girl might - “
Ingrid kisses her again, feeling like she has to make it two kisses in a row before one or both of them runs away from this. She thinks she might actually die if she waited another five years for this.
“A girl might - what?” Ingrid murmurs, her attention now entirely on the way that Dorothea’s grip on her has migrated from her collar to her hair.
Dorothea blinks, looking a little dazed. “A girl might get the wrong idea,” she murmurs, but she sounds unsure.
Ingrid presses their foreheads together and basks in the warmth. “You,” she says, her voice low, “could never be the wrong idea.”
Dorothea’s desperate, answering kiss feels like everything Ingrid has ever wanted.
.
“I can’t - I don’t know what I can give you,” Ingrid tells Dorothea later, her voice quiet. They’re curled up in Dorothea’s bed, facing each other, but it’s past midnight and all the lanterns have been put out; the only light that streams through is the weak illumination of a waning moon. “I’m not good at this.”
“I’ll say,” Dorothea whispers back. Ingrid feels more than sees Dorothea move forward ever so slightly, brushing her nose against Ingrid’s briefly to soften the blow of her next statement. “It took more than five years for a second kiss.”
In the dark, Ingrid blushes, but she laughs all the same. “Someone spent those five years on the other side of the continent from me.”
“I was scared of you,” Dorothea admits, her voice rueful. “You don’t understand how long you’ve had my heart for.”
“You could have had any- “
“Don’t say it,” Dorothea says, her voice rising a little. “I didn’t want anyone. I wanted you - want you. I thought you stepped out of my dreams when I met you, do you know that? You dreamed of being a knight. I dreamed of a knight coming to rescue me, and there you were.”
Ingrid feels her breath catch in her throat, and she leans forward to find Dorothea’s mouth with her own. It’s an awkward kiss and the angle is off, but it still feels thrilling. Maybe it always will.
“I don’t know how,” Ingrid murmurs, “but I’m going to make it work. I want - I want this. I’ll…figure the rest out.”
Dorothea lets out a pleased little hum. “I know you will,” she says. “I waited five years. If you keep kissing me, I won’t mind waiting five more.”
.
It takes five more months, not years, and the end of a war. It’s summer when Ingrid steps out onto the balcony of the house where she and Dorothea are hiding from the never-ending victory celebrations of Fhirdiad. It’s quieter here, with only the wildlife and the sound of rushing water to keep them company.
The Airmid river runs darker this season, clear blue water muddied by the debris of metal and blood carried in from all the battle fronts that are being slowly cleaned and rebuilt. Ingrid doesn’t know how long it’ll take for the waters to run blue again; maybe as long as new scar twisting across her left leg will take to properly heal and fade.
“If you’re done staring, come help me down here!” Dorothea calls from below, where she’s puttering around their little garden. She’s got on a wide-brimmed hat with a large cream ribbon tied off in the back, and a sundress with little flowers dotted across it. It’s unfairly pretty and does terrible things to Ingrid’s heart to see it.
“In a moment,” Ingrid calls back. “You did alright without me for five years, you can do alright without me for five more minutes!”
Dorothea’s laughter echoes around the trees as she shakes her head, looking exasperated but fond. “I’m telling on you to Felix,” she calls out in a sing-song voice as she moves to pick up another one of the small apple tree saplings he’d sent over this week. “Apple turnovers are only for those who put in the work, you know!”
Ingrid pauses, and then squints down. “Do you know how long a sapling takes to grow fruit?” she asks. She can see Dorothea pause, her hands hovering over the fragile little cutting. “Thea, do you think we’re going to have trees in the next few months?”
“I don’t have to answer that,” Dorothea finally says airily. “I’m not a farmer.”
Ingrid feels the laughter bubble up and out of her throat. “Stay right there, opera star. Let me come to you.”
She looks at the letter in her hand, smoothing her thumb over the edge of the paper. It’s been a couple of days now since she wrote it, and the messenger she called for will arrive later today to ferry the paper to Galatea. It’s just a formality; she knows that she’ll be seeing her father soon, spending the winter in Galatea with him and her brothers. But still, the words that she’d agonized over late into the night run through her mind on repeat, a persistent little curl of worry accompanying them.
Dear Father - I am looking forward to some time spent back at home. I will be bringing someone home with me - someone I intend to spend the rest of my life with. Dorothea Arnault may not be the one you envisioned for me, but I hope that you will grow to love her - for I love her, wholly and completely…
In the garden, Dorothea starts singing, startling Ingrid out of her reverie. The worry vanishes, replaced by something warm and content unfurling in her chest. She folds the letter and stows it away, carefully, and makes her way downstairs - towards the garden, towards the warm summer day, and towards Dorothea.
The wide-brimmed hat slides down Dorothea’s hair a little as she tips her head back and looks at Ingrid, smiling.
“Took you long enough,” she says, voice warm.
Ingrid laughs as she comes closer and reaches out to frame Dorothea’s cheeks with her hands, leaning down into a kiss.
“I know,” she murmurs. “But I got there in the end.”
.